AI & Answer Engines
Answer Engine Optimisation For AI Search
Be the source AI assistants cite when someone asks about your category.
A growing share of research now ends inside an AI answer rather than on a website. Answer engine optimisation is the work of making your content the thing those systems retrieve, quote and attribute, which depends on structure and clarity far more than on traditional ranking signals.
You probably need this if
- Competitors are named in AI answers about your category and you are not
- AI assistants describe your business inaccurately or with outdated facts
- Organic clicks are falling while impressions hold steady
- Your content answers questions but buries the answer several paragraphs down
What you get
- Baseline visibility audit across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews
- Citation gap analysis showing which sources are being quoted instead of you
- Content restructuring so answers are extractable rather than buried
- Entity and structured data work so machines resolve who you are
- Ongoing tracking of AI mentions and cited sources
How we approach it
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Establish the baseline
Run a defined set of category prompts across the major assistants and record who gets cited, since you cannot improve what you have not measured.
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Analyse the cited sources
Work out what the sources being quoted have in common, which is usually clear structure and unambiguous factual statements rather than domain authority.
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Restructure for extraction
Lead with direct answers, use honest headings that match real questions, and keep claims self-contained so a passage makes sense when lifted out of context.
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Strengthen the entity
Make your organisation unambiguous through structured data and consistent facts across the web, so assistants can resolve you confidently.
Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO): common questions
What is the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO optimises for a ranked list of links. AEO optimises to be the source an AI system retrieves and cites inside a generated answer. They share foundations such as crawlability and authority, but AEO puts far more weight on content structure, factual clarity and entity resolution.
How do I know if AI assistants mention my brand?
Test directly with a consistent set of category prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and repeat on a schedule. Responses vary between runs, so a single check tells you very little and a tracked set over time tells you a great deal.
Does AEO reduce my website traffic?
AI answers do reduce clicks for purely informational queries, which is happening whether or not you optimise. The realistic goal is to be the cited source, because attribution drives brand awareness and the higher-intent visits that follow, rather than to fight a shift you cannot reverse.
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Find out what is actually holding you back
A short conversation and a look at your site is usually enough to tell you where the real problem is. No obligation, and no pressure to sign anything.